Nights in Gotham
by old copperhead
Summary: Batman encounters a novel difficulty while guarding the citizens of Gotham. Calamity awaits.
1. Chapter 1

It was on this day that Batman was jumping from skyscraper to skyscraper when he received telepathic message...Ra's al Ghul, location hidden by scrambling radar znd satellite cloaking inside an internet cafe.

'Salaamu alaikum, Batman. You've done well in vanquishing Poison Ivy, habibi, but the League of Shadows will descend on you soon-quicker than a djinn grants a wish! Do not fall prey to your own fear, Mr Wayne: stay samidoun,' said Ra's Qur'anly and Arabically.

Batman ignored it as he would a mosquito buzzing in his ear. He looked down serenely and wiselu on the Gotham City of eight million hopeless souls of latent criminality desires and midnight diarrhea somnolence. Only a few people were out in this nigth, such as Clayface and Gordon Dent and Batgrirl, unbeknownst to all but the League.

The League myrmidons of masked malevolent mendacity and malignant malfeasance snatched Batgirl from her crimefighting and laughing carried her away, like the abduction of Persephone. They tied the young lady up and gagged her really tight, such that she could hardly struggle and the corners of the Batgirl mouth were pinched, and quickly drool would run down her chin. Batman will be outraged, said one of the goons.

Oh ho ho ho! said the other, we have most sorely bent the wishbone of circumstance, and soon doth it snap!

As it happens Robin could not interpose himself to help: he was in his apartment closet, nude save for his mask, hanging from the ceiling, blackened face and hand around his limp cock. Stale vomit spattered his face and chest, stomach; crusted bits of putrid curdled milk, oatmeal chunks yellow as the flag of Dorset, and decaying raccoon nutsacks; a foot or two away from the Robin corpse, splayed on the floor, was the old Charisma Carpenter Playboy issue.

Meanwhile Batman stood atop the Wayne Enterprises Tower where his parents were shot so many years ago. Bruce knew Mr Ghul and the League of Shadows had returned to wage jihad on Gotham, and he ws the only one who could stop them in time.

Will he rescue Batgirl and defeat Ra's al Ghul and the League of Shadows?

To be cotnuneud.


	2. Chapter 2

Ra's al-Ghul was still at the Internet cafe listening to the discography of Sameer al-Basheeri when one of his henchmen, via Bluetooth, informed him that all was not jayid in Gothan: Batman had bestirred himself, to better batter, bludgeon, bash, and belt these bellicose boorish bastard buffoons of bittersweet betrayal and bedlam.

'Do not worry, sadiq; stay s_abr_! Has tribulation not always dogged our heels? I am haunted by the non-functional Ahmed vest in Jakarta not so long ago. Anyhow, Activate Agent Clearwater.' Then Mr Ghul discontinued the Bluetooth call and proceeded to draw the ire of the other customers by throwing back his head and moaning so loudly that he was warned that expulsion was imminent.

As it happens, the Batman descended upon the safehouse as an avenging angel, suprising the League of Shadows within, who were variously cleaning pipes, moving cannisters of caustic chemicals, talking, or preparing schematics for the Glucose Ray Desaturation Modularizer, a device intended to disrupt the cogitation-activity and rob the victim's sharpness: its proof of concept had been given at an MIT presentation by an incognito Edward Nigma.

He swept in like Jan III Sobieski in days of old, a leonine roar accompanying his downward descent of ages. The dipshit goons quailed and the loveliness Batgirl of lupus and frustrated crimefighting syncopation grunted for she was as every bit as shocked as her captors. She silently wondered, began pondering at the Instrumentality of this resciture: as a matter of fact, the tied-and-gagged young lady asked herself, is the Will at the root of this action, and all actions like it? So went her speculation, even as the League of Shadows pitched into turmoil and confusion and the sky darkened unto a shroud of fuligin and Robin's faraway corpse succumbed to rigor mortis.

Batman brought such ruin to the henchmen that their remains were not immediately recognizable as human; they resembled the cauldron pygmy porridge churned in the dark Congolese jungle of ages. They were as human jetsam from the whirling undertow of confrontation and excited interest. And Batman now stood among them, and came through the putrid deluge such that he very nearly vomited, and striding over untied and ungagged the Batgirl, who embraced him and grinned and suddenly the woman thought that to leave here would simply be to arrive somewhere else. However she said nothing of this to the Batman, and although it sobered her, she told no one of this for the rest of her days.

Even as the two shared a hug of dark-winged bliss and momentary togetherness and averted rape, elsewhere in Gotham Mr Clayface was rampaging, even as another threat remained underneath.


	3. Chapter 3

Ra's al-Ghul fumed. Batman had brought sudden devastation to the League safehouse, Batgirl was no longer captive, Clayface had thrown himself upon the mercy of the Gotham PD just minutes past, and his spinach had salmonella on it.

Batmsnm and Batgirl swept through the Troubled City as the Mongols did Samarkand centuries before. Bells tolled, roses were thrown, and children cheered as one. Even so, Bruce Wayne maintained his equanimity, and apart from the occasional wave, he did not acknowledge them anything. Contrary to the exuberant Batgirl grinning and blowing kisses, Batmasn was as a spider sensing the fly trembling in its web.

Don't think that all was done and over just yet. Ra's al-Ghul was well-prepared, like an incontinent buttocks pirate captain of crucial appearances and desperate concatenation and struggling slashed sphincter of seasick strained Sisyphean suffering. The man pondered these circumstances as a zookeeper does an escaped lion. Then the plan he had.

"I do not glory in the praise, Barbara,' said Mr Wayne, 'only the justice of the noose or a 6 by 8 foot cell. Robin doesn't appreciate the difference; it doesn't surprise me you are the same.' And so Batgirl grew ashamed, even as she looked upon Batman with wonder-was the Dark Knight, this smitten callow lady thought, a true Philosopher-King? So go the thoughts of Barbara Gordon.

Anyway, they arrived on Main Street to thunderous applause that turned to consternated roar when al-Ghul, at last at bay and recognized by everyone, revealed his final move: meatshields. That is to say, he was surrounded by four children strapped with bomb-vests. Ghul held the detonator in his hands, and made it clear to all that if he was waylaid or attacked in his flight from Gotham, the little children would be the seagulls' repast.

'Ra's, let the kids go,' bellowed Batman, and the crowd eagerly parted for him as though he were Julius Caesar approaching the Lupercal. It seemed all the world, awe-struck, watched this confrontation, the chastened Batgirl as silent as any.

But Ra's stood unrepentant; his chortle might have been that of an IRS agent rifling through Wesley Snipe's file cabinets. 'Why would I do that, habibi?'

'Because it's the right thing to do,' answered Batman, much to the scornful laughter of the Ghul.

'My life? For a few retarded brats? No, listen: I've cheated, lied, stolen, extorted, raped, murdered, and do you know that my greatest crime is not pursuing my goals as ruthlessly as I might have?'

_All statements are false, _thought Batgirl, but left unshared to the throng all around.

'What is often called ruthlessness is simply a sober, but highly unpleasant and demanding, calculation of each decision's consequences. You, Ra's, merely inflict harm for its own sake. You torture the innocent for your own pleasure. You stop at nothing to sow discord and spread lies. You degrade this city as a cancer. Now vengeance comes.'

A pregnant pause. Thousands of eyes, trained on the two men. Thousands of hearts, drumming in chests, so anxiously.

No one could have said when it started. Batman and Ra's al-Ghul were staring each other down one moment, like wolves readying for the leadership lament of deadly disputation, and the next there might have been a blur, as there is when a rattlesnake strikes. As quick as that, the detonator was ripped from Ra's hand by a batarang, a second, aimed at Mr Ghul's throat, was swatted away effortlessly, and the two men closed, traded blows in a mere instant before Ra's fell with a shriek, arm broken so bad it was entirely in the wrong direction.

The master of the League of Shadows begged for pardon, much to the crowd's displeasure, but Batman heard him out: Lt. Jim Gordon-the Batgirl's father-showed up real soon with two police officers, and they arrested Ghul on myriad charges. The children were alive and well, if a bit rattled by these events, and the crowd cheered like lunatics as the sniveling Ra's al-Ghul was led into the squad car and driven away. What's more, they hailed Batman as a hero, much to his indifference; Batgirl embraced him warmly, but instead of return it he offered the wisdom, which sent her tumbling into confusion.

Thus was disaster averted...for now.

The end.


End file.
